China seizes cargo ship from Japanese over wartime debt

Share via

Fresh compensation claims over the Chinese-Japanese war have been filedCorbis

Lucy AlexanderTokyo

Published at 12:01AM, April 22 2014

China has impounded a Japanese ship after a court in Shanghai ordered its seizure over non-payment of Second World War debts in a move that will add to regional tensions before a state visit to Tokyo by President Obama tomorrow.

The situation was exacerbated yesterday when Shinzo Abe, the Japanese prime minister, sent a ritual offering to a Tokyo shrine linked to Japan’s past imperial militarist regime.

China’s state news agency, Xinhua, described Mr Abe’s donation to the Yasukuni shrine, where the souls of 14 war criminals are revered alongside millions of other Japanese war dead, as “nothing short of